Happy accidents are a thing. Bob Ross was right, because, well of course he was. Made on August 18, 2019, this photograph happened on your typical balmy late summer afternoon. Heat and humidity do wonderful things to camera and lens gear left napping within under cool, air conditioned climes. And by wonderful things I mean annoying, undesirable scientific reaction type things. Cool glass, you see, is want to put on a water condensation show and fog up with pride.
This is all rather bush-league on my part, having thought I learned better long ago. Even though the preflight checklist remains the same, a lazy oversight is bound to happen. Nevertheless, it was with fogged 100mmmacro lens in hand I made some soft, almost fantastical photos of a Black-eyed Susan in my front yard. Coupled with soft focus, shallow depth of field, and boatloads of bokeh, the ample fog sets us adrift. Unmoored, we slow down, detached from our present world invited into a softer, kinder land. There is possibility here, the rough edges worked out by soft and inviting flower petals. A warm touch from a welcoming hand, asking us to join in the splendor otherwise shrouded by clarity.
Until Next Season — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/800
It is now September. This more or less puts a wrap on flower season for 2019. I have a few photographs from summer to publish here yet, but making new flower photos is all but done. Looking back on this summer’s flower shooting, I’m pleased with where I’m at. I spent more time with my 100mmmacro lens than I have in years, and made at least one photograph certain to make the 2019 best of list. I am hereby allowing myself a pat on the back.
Random musings:
The New York Giants defense is terrible; after one game in Dallas it seems we’re onto next season
The New York Yankees are good; a deep run of October baseball will be my football
I am currently listening to Mornings on Horseback on Audible; excited to learn more about Theodore Roosevelt
Did a run of Star Wars audiobooks before that (with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy mixed in)—Thrawn: Treason, Master & Apprentice, and Dooku: Jedi Lost; all were excellent. With music, sound effects, strong production values, and expert narration, Star Wars novels lend themselves well to an audio format
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a good video game
Hollow Knight is an exceptional video game—easily in my top 5 favorites of the past decade
The Mandalorian is going to be great; all in on space western sci-fi
Despite my disappoint with The Last Jedi, I am pumped for The Rise of Skywalker
Starting my fourth week of HelloFresh™, impressed and satisfied so far
Late Summer — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Hey, it’s me. The human tasked with running this website, a would-be content producer or something. Of course running is a loose term considering I’ve ghosted for about a month. Since launch in January 2014 I have never missed a month getting at least one post up. So here I am, getting in under the wire on August 31, 2019. For a while this year I was churning out of modicum of quality content but I slipped. Here’s hoping I can get back to regular posts and photographs.
This photo, Late Summer, takes us back to a sparkling sunset that stunned the LBI Region with evening drama on Friday, August 23. I was out at dinner with my family and missed the best parts. Rainbows and mammatus clouds dominated the eastern vantage gracing any and all whom happened to be open on the beach at that hour. It must have been an absolute stunner.
Chagrined and full of missing out anxiety we beelined for home. My toes tapping nervously from the passenger seat at each red light. Looking out the window handcuffed to inactivity, I could do nothing to arrest what I was missing. Finally home I made a mad dash into the house to grab my gear. The clock was ticking. From there it was a full tilt beeline—all while observing proper posted speed limits—to Cedar Run Dock Road.
Once in position I had about 5-10 minutes to capture the remaining light. Nature at least begged my pardon with a sparkling second act. Sure I missed the rainbow infused mammatus, but at least I made out with a pleasing late summer sunset.
With that I check the box for August 2019 posts. Let’s go September; let’s do this. Summer is late but I have no time for early fall.
Yoga, photography, and the sun all went down on Cedar Run Dock Road last night. I sprinkled in some comfort zone stretching people shooting with the familiar task of landscapemarsh photography. In need of fresh content for a forthcoming issue of Bay Magazine, friend and entrepreneur, Adam Binder of Aperion Yoga, sought assistance from my girlfriend Rose and me. Rose would provide the modeling and yoga talent and I the camera.
With good natural light, a fresh breeze, and warm temperatures we had ideal conditions for what amounted to a near 45 minute photo shoot. We wasted little time and worked through a dozen or so different partner poses, and I made a total of 162 frames all with my 35mm lens. I was shooting wide open at f/1.4 to shorten depth of field and bring the sharper focus to our yogis. I’m satisfied with how this strategy played out. Of course my inexperience was showing when Adam requested coaching and direction on posing, facial expressions, hand position, etc. Being a novice to photographing people I had little to offer, but things still worked out well enough.
Adam’s basic requirements consisted of producing a vertical photograph with an 8.5 x 11 crop factor, his yoga mat visible—they are beautiful, by the way—and “pop.” With that, I did my best. Tonight, I am posting what is easily the most abstract of the poses photographed. All credit to Rose and her creative inclination to line the mat up along the double yellow road lines, where she entered an L shaped handstand while Adam was in downward facing dog behind her. While in the pose Rose rested her feet upon Adam’s hips. It is fascinating to look into this pose low to the ground and head on, it’s difficult to puzzle out the positioning. The presence of hands and feet leaves the viewer curious, wanting more. It brings interest into further exploring the photograph to piece together how their shared alignments works.
Beyond the mystery of the partner pose there are things to discuss about composition. Dominating the frame, Rose’s asana creates a tall isosceles triangle. This mirrors the Aperion logo, an equilateral triangle, seen along her black waistband. More than that, however, is the sense of place framing our models. The road surface, its double yellow lines moving through the pose and jogging ever so gently to the left, flanked on each side by marsh grasses grounds the yogis in nature. Further backdropped by late day light moments before sunset. Rose’s pastel pants atop the frame make a perfect counterbalance to the well matched pastel yoga mat at the bottom of the picture. Rose’s array of tattoos build another layer, with the Sanskrit tattoo running vertical down her back connected to the top of the photo to the bottom. Despite everything going on here simplicity and balance still somehow win the day. This is the kind of paradox that makes art so fascinating and enigmatic.
Hop, Skip, and a Jump — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
I bring you the marsh. I bring you a sunset. I bring you an idiom. The salt marsh was lit last night, and I have the brackets to prove it. I am fortunate to have such a spot to photograph so close to home. Topping the list is Cedar Run Dock Road. A hop, skip, and a jump from my house is holds sway as a striking salt marsh. It is a classic example of a Mid-Atlantic marsh ecosystem primed to support substantial annual avian migrations. How lucky am I that I can be out there in 10 minutes?
I want to critique myself here; not something I do often but it is nagging me enough to share. So out with it: I am not sold on this composition. My eyes and brain struggle with where to look. It’s not so much a balance thing, the weight seems right, as much as the multiple tide pools are somehow disjointed. It’s disrupting my usual ability to know where to look and how to get there as I move across a photograph. I am curious if others feel the same way.
That said the awkward spread of brackish water pools and marsh grass tells a more complete story of the marshland. It lets the viewer in on the spread; the random array of water and green grass as it spans square miles of salt marsh. In this respect it better portrays the salt marsh as it is, a living complex of life and color.
Honey bees! Working, buzzing, collecting. Pollen clinging and clumping in large, impressive blobs stuck about their legs. Dutiful, the bees worked over one flower head after another, nonstop in their quest for pollen. They did not seem to mind my presence much, either. Showing no ill will toward my camera intrusion. Though getting tack sharp focus was not the easiest considering they never slow nor settle.
But seriously, I cannot believe I have honey bees. There must have been dozens milling about the flowers strewn about my property. I never remember seeing this many honey bees in an entire season, let alone on a single day, and I have been photographic my yard extensively since 2012. My little black and yellow buds were doing their best work on my other little black and yellow buds, my Black-eyed Susan blossoms. It was awesome to watch.
Pastel and glass at sunset on the marsh. Cotton candy spun across the sky looking down upon its mirrored reflection. Serenity now, and to hell with the insanity later. Marsh grasses flex gently in the slightest of breeze, a hint of baby’s breath to complete the tableau. Exhale and smile—it is summer on the salt marsh.
There was nothing too crazy in the execution of this photograph. Tripod and 14mm lens. The former set to a height of about four feet, and the latter dialed in to maximize hyperfocal distance with an aperture of f/8. From there a simple check to get leveled out and then popping off seven bracketed exposures, a one step separation between each. With the lazy shutter on the final bracket allowing more light to illuminate the marsh grass, giving the ghosting effect demonstrating movement. Bringing the baby’s breath breeze into the frame. It is the only hint of motion in an otherwise still scene.
When Mother Nature shows up with a perfect mix of elements execution is simple. It’s a point and shoot situation, and your job is to know where to stand.
You See — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
You can visit the same place over and over for years, photograph it hundreds of times, and to quote the great Yogi Berra, “you can observe a lot by watching.” Which is to see one of my assumptions about the Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh may be false. For years I operated, with certainty, the notion that come late June/early July the marsh grass would take on a special kind of green. A solid sea of newborn springtime green, uniform and lush. The marsh grass would grow long and the color it cast had such a lively glow that if you stared hard enough you’d think it breathing.
Much of this notion stems from a single, formative photograph I made back in 2013. It was a pair of photographs, actually, yet I have but one posted here. South-facing, a summertime sun shower that to this day still holds a spot in my nine photo portfolio. Suggesting in and of itself I may be holding on to something too tight. This photo shows the marsh in all its green glory. From that point on, as the calendar flipped to June, I would hype on the great green return. Except it has turned more into the great green reckoning. Instead of a green shag carpet the marsh has taken on yellows and reds worked in among the green. I have also observed the grass has not grown quite as tall. Interesting.
So what gives? Were I of a proper scientific mind it would be time to lay down a hypothesis, prepare an experiment, and record results. My observation, however late, as shown my years long hypothesis about greening to be wrong. Is there a way to demonstrate experimentally why? Can said experiment then be independently repeated by others and at other salt marshes? Of course I lack the skill and intellect to make any of this happen, but I will, as any laughable armchair scientist would, spitball the possibilities. I mean anti-intellectualism is en vogue no anyway, am I right?
So here goes. Years of evidence suggests lush green is the exception and not the norm, at least over the past five years. Whatever happened prior is out of reach. So what happened back in the halcyon days of June 2013? I have a couple thoughts. One possibility is the presence of more fresh water in the salt marsh ecosystem. If not freshwater, then some kind of difference in the water table to facilitate lush growth and coloration. The second condition may have wholly been a factor of lighting. I made South-facing in late afternoon as a thunderstorm was pushing in over the marsh from west to east. Set against the darkened, rain filled clouds was a potent dose of golden sunlight. It is possible this let play affected the color of the grasses. I find this latter possibility more dubious, but for right now these two theories are all I have got. If any folks out there in the know what is actually up I would love you to take me to school.
I will end this saunter through my mind’s eye with a quote by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “you see, but you do not observe.”
Update [30 June 2019]: My smart and astute friend Staci dropped this clever insight on Facebook: “Hurricane Sandy, fall 2012. I posit that perhaps all of the detritus and chaos from that storm, toxic to the ecosystem or otherwise, could’ve had an impact.” This makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Staci.
Step right up and descend into the shrunken world. Together we journey top down to look upon an alien world hiding in plain sight. Let us accept this macroabstraction to challenge the mind to place what the eyes register.
And just what is it we are looking at?
For lack of proper nomenclature let’s call it a nascent honeysuckleflower in the making several days before its better known floral blossom ribbon properly unfurls. A tightly bound cluster of purplish tentacles spring sunward in a bundle not much larger than a quarter. Covering each arm of the cluster stands a ready array of tiny follicles shellacked in a sticky, pollen type substance. My mind churns. Hundreds of tiny posts hoisting a collective individuality built up the surface of a greater system of life. Down here, mired in constituent parts, we contemplate the unsung parcels that compose the greater whole.
In and out of focus mental gears grind and turn against the shallow depth of field. Tall towers jut directly toward us, escaping the foggy void to shed light on the penthouse. The near symmetry struck a shade askew lends credible structure suggesting the proper hand of purpose in its design. The fractal quality the surging towers builds upon the mathematical basis of nature.
You will get all this and more when you travel top down into the abstract world of honeysuckle macros. I hope you have enjoyed the trip.
I had leaned hard to go with a black and white treatment for this photograph. I was working a striking, high contrast low key approach with plenty of black negative space. I even tossed it to the Instagram story poll. As of this posting we are 10 votes to 4 in favor of color. Perhaps we will go top down on the black and white version some other time.
